Researchers in Washington State are just like the rest of the misfits that call themselves wildlife biologists. Somehow they think that every animal they study needs one of these intrusive devices hung around its neck. Our Universities have produced a crop of researchers that are incompetent when out in the field and that rely on these tracking devices, because they cannot find the animals without one.
I was watching a uncollared wolf dig up a coyote den in Yellowstone when a wolf researcher arrived and waved his antenna around a few times and then proceeded to climb back into his blue pickup. When I asked him if he was looking for wolves, he told me that there were none in the area as he had not gotten any signals from radio collars. I hope he was embarrassed when I pointed out the wolf sitting two hundred yards away in plain view on the hillside. This seems to be typical of the wildlife biologists I meet in our national parks. They are lost if you take away their radio-collars and antennas.
Animals die from the stress of being chased and collared when their muscles break down and flood the kidneys with proteins from the damaged muscle. This is called Capture Myopathy.
Macho B, the Jaguar killed by researchers in Arizona, had kidney failure after being snared and collared.
Thirteen Iowa football players were hospitalized recently when they came down with the human version called Exertional Rhabdomyolysis. It is caused by the same thing. Lunatic football coaches push their players until the player's muscles break down and damage their kidneys. Kidney failure is certain without treatment.
Lunatic wildlife researchers chase wolves with helicopters, capture Grizzlies and Jaguars in snare traps, and chase cougars with hounds until the wild animals suffer kidney damage in the the same way. Unfortunately, they don't get rushed to a hospital for treatment. They get entered in the researcher's report as having died from 'Unknown Causes."
Any animal that dies within sixty days after being captured was probably killed by the researchers.
I fear for this Pygmy Rabbit.